Nix on the Knicks Puns, Please

With a couple of heavy-handed losses and a recent Saturday Night Live sketch addressing the inherent racism in jokes about a certain Chinese (and Taiwanese)-American basketball player, we had hoped that the month of terrible Jeremy Lin puns were over. Yet the New York Post started out the week stronger than ever, with a cover exclaiming “Lin-phomania!” The sexual Lin-nuendo of a headline was an even more troubling evolution of Linsanity, given his Tebow-esque devotion to Christianity. We almost wish that the Knicks point guard loses even more games, so his rise to fame isn’t the Lin-ch pin for more horrific puns. (Oh god, we can’t help it, either! Someone make it stop!)

Not that we’re the only ones with our eye on Number 17: Jay-Z and Beyonce made a rare public appearance last week to a Knicks game, despite the fact that Sean Carter had previously announced a change in his allegiances to the New Jersey Nets (soon to be Brooklyn Nets), of which he is part owner along with Mikhail Prokhorov and Bruce Ratner. He’s already told Knicks fans to start trading in their hats and turn their attention to worshiping Kris Humphries but maybe that doesn’t officially kick in until next season. (Then again, Mr. Humphries and his team did defeat the Knicks in a shocking Madison Square Garden game earlier this week, leading to many a “too much MSG” joke. Too many, perhaps?) “Humphries” isn’t nearly as punny as “Lin” but we’ll give him this: whatever Kim Kardashian did to him, it seems to have improved his game.

New York royalty Jay-Z and Beyonce weren’t the only superstars in the audience for New York’s newly hot-again basketball team: Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Facebook recently filed for an IPO, was also seen attending a sports game. If that $100 billion value projection is correct, the be-hooded wunderkind could be scouting out a team to buy himself. (By the way, you know what’s cooler than one hundred million dollars? Of course you do; we all saw The Social Network.)

Orange and blue aren’t the only colors that have caught the eye of New Yorks this week. There’s also red … like the color of newly-appointed Catholic cardinal Timothy Dolan’s new uniform, who was elevated to the position of cardinal on Saturday. He’s already laid out his four big priorities for his new role: two of them involve fundraising, one involves outreach, and the last involves convincing heterosexual Catholics to stop divorcing each other. (Homosexual Catholics, keep doing whatever you want; you’re going to hell anyway.) Last week Cardinal Dolan was leading the crusade with Congressional Republicans against President Obama’s reproductive rights ruling, which would have forced religious employers to pay for health insurance that includes access to contraceptives. Now the White House has compromised with a plan that requires health insurance companies to pay for the care, but neither group is placated. And now a certain presidential candidate is suggesting that use of birth control is morally wrong, which, if you count Mr. Santorum’s kids and assume no use of contraception, probably tells you something about his sex life. But the posturing and disingenuousness in the so-called debate has been completely Lin-sane… Ahem. Insane. In-sane.

You know what? We give up. We don’t have the Lin-ergy to keep this up. Gooooooo Knickerbockers.